Friday, December 10, 2004

1:00 pm- 3:00 pm

Room 109, Regents Conference Room

Butrovich Building, Fairbanks Campus

Draft Minutes

1. Call to Order and Roll Call

Present:

Lisa Sporleder, Chair; President, Statewide Administration Assembly

Josh Steadman, President, UAF Staff Council

Carey Werlein, President, Kachemak Bay Branch Student Association

Todd Closson, President, Kenai Peninsula College Student Union

John Mun, Vice President, UAA Assembly

Abel Bult Ito, President, UAF Faculty Senate

Larry Foster, President, UAA Assembly

Rita Fuller, President, UAS Staff Council

Others present:

Pat Ivey, Executive Officer, System Governance

Ian Michael Hebert, ASUAF

Amber Clark, Coordinator, Coalition of Student Leaders

2. Adopt Agenda

MOTION: passed without objection

“The System Governance Council moves to adopt the agenda for the December 10, 2004 meeting. This action is effective December 10, 2004.”

3. Chair’s Report

Welcome to the System Governance Council’s President’s Retreat. So far, I guess we’re kind of 0-for-2 for the year…September’s meeting got postponed into October, and now our November retreat is taking place in December. I appreciate everyone being flexible enough to work with the group through these scheduling difficulties. We do our best to set calendars that look workable at the time. Sometime, though, reality gets in the way, and the best-laid plans just don’t pan out. We will certainly try to maintain our calendar for the rest of the year because being able to plan in advance is important in our busy lives. I just wanted to extend my personal thank you for being willing to work around schedule changes. Had we stuck to our original date and held this retreat last month, President Hamilton would have had to attend via audioconference, and that just doesn’t make for a very effective President’s Retreat. I wasn’t quite comfortable making that decision without your help, so I appreciate you responding so quickly last month, agreeing that a President’s Retreat without President Hamilton in attendance just isn’t the same, and being flexible enough to be here today. You are a great group. As busy as we all are, it is tough to find a good time to get together, but that very busyness, our involvement in our University and Alaska communities, is also what makes System Governance Council a great group. Coming together as a council allows each of us to see viewpoints and other priorities other than our own, which is important for understanding and collaboration. I’m honored to be chair of a group with that kind of attitude and ethic. I join you in looking forward to hearing what President Hamilton has to say, up close and personal.

We each represent a distinct part of the university community, either faculty, staff, students, or alumni. While each of those groups has particular issues with which it must deal, this is the place where we can bring ideas to the table to discuss the things we have in common. This morning’s Round Table Discussion will allow us the opportunity to discuss those commonalities with members of the Executive Staff. I don’t know if you understand how rare this opportunity is in governance. Very few university systems have the relationship with their executives that we enjoy. I hope none of us take it for granted. Talk to the students who went to the Portland student government conference last month, and they will tell you. We have real access to the top levels of university management. If we have an issue, we can bring it up to them, discuss it with them, and most times, come to an understanding. To have a retreat like this, where we can talk candidly with President Hamilton and his staff about issues that concern us, makes us the cream of the crop in governance circles. I just want you to understand how valuable and rare our governance system is at the University of Alaska. It is as special as Alaska itself.

At our last meeting, we saw a draft of the new Governance Regulation and associated Policy revision. Staff Alliance put together an ad hoc committee of faculty, staff, and students to bring these documents to a final draft form, and the committee has completed its work. The documents were presented to Staff Alliance last month, which approved them and passed them on to this body for final approval. Because they deal with governance for faculty, staff, and students, this group seemed the appropriate one to give that final approval and pass them on to the President and Board of Regents for inclusion in University Regulation and Policy. We will see those documents this afternoon during our business meeting.

If anyone has any topics that they feel would benefit from discussion at the System Governance Council level, I hope you will please bring them forward for inclusion in our agenda. I work with Pat Ivey to prepare an agenda and minutes that honestly reflect what we do and what we need to do, but I am just one person in one building in one city. I can’t know what all the issues are that need to be addressed. Help me help this group to be the best it can be. Thanks!

4. Governance Regulation and Related Policy Revision

http://gov.alaska.edu/council/2004-11-08.governancereg-final.pdf

http://gov.alaska.edu/council/2004-11-08.proposed-change-to-policy-03.01.01.pdf

MOTION: passed without objection

“The System Governance Council approves the proposed amendments to Regents Policy 03.01.01 and the proposed draft regulations 03.01.01 for transmittal to President Hamilton and the Board of Regents for action as appropriate. This action is effective December 10, 2005.

5. Council Constitution Change Regarding Number of Meetings Per Year http://gov.alaska.edu/Council/Constitution/

MOTION: passed without objection

“The System Governance Council moves to change the minimum number of meetings in Council constitution Article V.A. from six meetings per year to four meetings per year. This action is effective December 10, 2005.”

6. System Governance Reports

6.1 Faculty Alliance

Abel Bult-Ito reported that the Alliance had a presentation from Dave Veazey on electronic workloads. The academic vice presidential search committee has two faculty from each MAU on the search committee. The Alliance approved the governance policy and regulations.

7.2 Staff Alliance Attachment 7.2

Lisa Sporleder reported that as the first semester of the academic year comes to a close, Staff Alliance is finishing up some projects and just beginning others. The Governance Regulation and associated Policy change has been passed up to this body for final approval. This project was originally begun by Staff Alliance in 2000, but other issues took priority and work on the new Regulation ceased. They picked it back up again last year, and have seen it through to completion.

Another item that has been a top priority of the Staff Alliance for several years has been developing a method of regular Cost of Living increases to the staff salary grid. With impetus from the Staff Compensation Task Force put together last year by Rory O’Neill, it was made clear to Statewide Human Resources that THE most important issue of concern to staff across the UA system was the unchecked erosion of their paychecks due to inflation. At yesterday’s Board of Regents meeting, the Board approved a change to Policy that will allow an annual Cost of Living increase to the salary grid that is linked to the Anchorage CPI. Both sides compromised on the final outcome. The increase is capped at 2% per year to provide some stability to the budget process against runaway inflation. The fact that it is happening at all speaks to the cooperation between staff governance and those that manage the business of the University. It is an issue that the Alliance has vocally and repeatedly championed for at least five years that I’m aware of, and it soon to be a reality.

The new multi-optioned health plan took effect last July. Staff Alliance had participation on the committees that developed the plan and its financing, and had regular updates from both participants and HR staff. We will keep our eyes on how the new plan is working and continue to work with HR to further develop a health plan that is effective and still tries to mitigate the high medical inflation rates.

As these items come to a close, Staff Alliance is working with Jim Johnsen on new issues of importance to staff. We are working with HR’s Benefits staff in the development of a Wellness Program that could offer some real savings in the form of health care claims not incurred. We are also getting started on developing a mediation project. I envision this to be a method by which workplace problems can be resolved informally in most cases, without having to go through a forma grievance process. Another issue that Staff Alliance has set its sights on is employee development in general and supervisor training in particular. Before the “desert years” the University had a system in place for training new and existing supervisors. Along with most training opportunities, it fell by the wayside a decade ago, though the need did not. Jim Johnsen agrees that these are important issues, and we will be getting started this year to come up with solid plans for progress in these important areas.

Staff is also keeping tabs on the Job Reclassification project, which is now about 80% complete with the recent completion of the admin group. Lastly, as the Legislative session gets underway, the Staff Alliance will also participate in advocacy for the university, which culminates in the annual Cookie Brigade in Juneau the first week of April.

7.3 Coalition of Student Leaders

Todd Closson reported that the group had sent a delegation to the Northwest Student Leadership Conference at Portland State University. The Coalition has an ad hoc legislative committee working on this year’s campaign. The Coalition attends the student leadership conference hosted by the United Students of UAS-Juneau each year, and as part of that, also visits legislators. Student regent elections are underway. Closson is a member of the MyUA focus group and is excited about that.

Lots of the small school student leaders come in with no idea of what to do so the Coalition will be working with Pat Ivey to do brochure on the Coalition.

7.4 Alumni Associations

The statewide development office is hiring a researcher to assess alumni association needs. The alumni will have a retreat with the president next fall after the report has come out.

7. Local Governance Reports

7.1 UAA

The UAA Assembly is busy with budget review. The Assembly had a MyUA presentation at its last meeting and is soliciting faculty, students and staff to participate in campus MyUA steering committee. The Classified Council is developing a manual on staff rights. Students are looking at bringing back the pub on campus.

7.2 UAF

The UAF Governance Coordinating Committee looking on supervisory training. Very high priority for staff and should be for faculty as well. The Coordinating Committee is also looking at establishing a campus-wide diversity committee that would report directly to the chancellor. The committee would have students, faculty and staff, with chair reporting to the chancellor with EEO officer sitting ex-officio. The UAA Faculty Senate has a diversity committee and there is a UAA wide committee on diversity. UAF used the UAA model as a guideline.

Banner has a function called Banner Survey. Steadman advised Banner Survey could use that for elections and for surveys. UAF is going to do ASUAF elections and possibly senate elections using Banner Survey this spring. The UAA Faculty Senate approved electronic balloting last year but had to set up a separate server to do that. UAA classified and APT elections were done on line.

Regarding performance based budgeting – an ad hoc committee is working on a brochure to explain it in simple terms.

ASUAF reported that glass-recycling program, 6 tons of glass sent to Anchorage for recycling-biggest share ever.

UAF Faculty Senate passed a policy on acceptable degrees. The document has been sent to university general counsel for review and forwarded to the Faculty Alliance.

7.3 UAS

Mike Ciri came and made a presentation to the UAS Staff Council. This brought everyone out of woodwork as system been down twice per day for last two months. UAS just implemented a spam server to alleviate the situation. John Pugh will be coming to every meeting. Staff really felt good about this. Reclassification-people are not very happy – four people complained. Tara Keeler will speak at next Staff Council meeting. Regarding outcomes based budgeting, Rita Fuller’s understanding is that UAS is going to be looked at the same way as other MAUs regarding credit hour production, but Sitka doesn’t get credit for classes taught by UAS Sitka when the credit is claimed by other campuses.

7.4 Statewide Administration Assembly

SAA is currently in its period of community service and socialization otherwise known as The Holidays. Our Thanksgiving Potluck was one of the best attended ever, and we hope for the same at our Christmas Luau potluck next Friday. We are off to a great start on our annual Canned Food Drive to benefit the Food Bank, and today concludes the gathering of gifts for the family we are sponsoring through Love, INC. This year’s family is special to us because it is the family of a son and daughter-in-law of one of the Butrovich Building’s custodians. They lost everything in a recent house fire, and the Statewide employees are making sure that this family of four and a half (two children, one on the way) not only has Christmas gifts, but a start on a new household.

SAA has kept informed on the building move within Butrovich. When ARSC employees moved into the new WRRB building, it freed up the space necessary for Budget and Institutional Research and the Fairbanks Land Management office to return to Butrovich from where they had been residing in the Whole Earth building. The moves are now completed, or we wouldn’t be having our retreat in this room! The Board of Regents conference room was a staging area for cubicle parts and partitions.

We recently had a presentation by David Leone of the Fairbanks Borough transportation office. He is looking at developing a U-Pass system for the Fairbanks university community. Right now, we have grant funding that is allowing the local MACS transit system to operate free to bus riders in the winter here in Fairbanks. That funding will run

out before the winter of 2006, so we have some time to develop a U-Pass for Fairbanks. SAA is also trying to keep informed on issues and changes with Parking Services at UAF. The new head of Parking Services recently attended a meeting and discussed several parking issues with SAA representatives. I’m sure we will continue to keep ourselves informed in these and other issues of importance to Statewide staff.

7.5 Small Density Schools

The student representative from

8. Comments

Closson said that the biggest issue at his school was child care and asked for any information the other campuses may have on the subject.

9. Adjourn

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 2:35pm.